Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press

mystical conversation follows them wherever they wander, just as Miriam's
of
well gave drink to Israel throughout their forty-year trek through the
movable
The adventures of the companions show their participation in
wilderness.
greatest suffering, that of exile.
Israel's
historic exile, however, is itself symbolic, an earthly representation
Israel's
a still greater exile, that of the Shekhinah from Her divine spouse. The
of
and origin of this inner divine ``exile'' is one of the kabbalists' great
nature
Some passages, both in the Zohar and in earlier sources, attribute it
mysteries.
the sin of Adam and Eve. In this sense, Kabbalah may be said to have a true
to
of the ``fall'' or ``original sin'' of humans, much more so than the older
sense
sources. The world as ®rst created was a true Garden of Eden because
rabbinic
blessed Holy One and Shekhinah were ``face-to-face,'' joined in constant
the
like that of the upper se®rot Ḥokhmah and Binah. Divine blessingthus
embrace
through the system without interruption, ¯owing through all of She-
coursed
``hosts'' and ``palaces'' into an idealized lower world as well. Only
khinah's
and Eve's sinÐsometimes depicted as that of separating Shekhinah from
Adam
upper se®rot to worship Her alone (symbolized by the separation of the
the
of Knowledge from its roots in the Tree of Life)Ðdisturbed this initial
Tree
which since the expulsion from Eden has been sporadic rather than
harmony,
dependent upon the balance of human virtue and transgression.
constant,
other passages express a somewhat darker vision of the exile within
But
Here the very existence of the lower worlds is an after-effect of divine
God.
and would not have taken place without it. Some of these sources employ
exile
old Platonic myth of androgyny, embedded in an ancient midrashic de-
the
of Adam and Eve, to explain the cosmic reality. Adam and Eve,
scription
the aggadah, were Siamese twins, cojoined back-to-back. This
accordingto
being is that described in Genesis 1:27: ``God created the human in His
single
in the divine form He created him, male and female He created them.''
form;
formingof Eve from Adam's rib (or ``side'') in the followingchapter is the
The
of this pair, in which they are ®rst turned face-to-face to one
separation
so that they might meet, see one another, and unite to propagate
another,
species, ful®llingGod's ®rst command. The kabbalists claim that in this
the
too humans are made in God's image: the se®rot Tif'eret and Malkhut
sense
a single entity, back-to-back. They had to be ``sawed'' apart (a rather
were
choice of verb) so that they might be properly united. Only through
violent
union does the divine life begin to ¯ow outward, giving life to worlds
this
In order for our life to come about, in other words, God has to undergo
below.
transformative act of great pain, one in which the divine becomes separated
a
itself, its future reuni®cation to depend entirely upon the actions of
from
creatures below. Here exile and sufferingare inherent in the cosmos,
these
the balm provided by human goodness is somewhat more super®cial, an
and
of relief in the wanderingthat is indeed the necessary human and cosmic
oasis
Introduction
lxiv
condition.